


such a heavenly way to die

by YaelaTheWordsmith



Series: Android Universe [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: AI Kenma, Android Suga, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, M/M, Nostalgia, Past Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:41:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22051927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YaelaTheWordsmith/pseuds/YaelaTheWordsmith
Summary: It's more than a decade later, and Koushi has deteriorated rapidly. Issei and Tetsurou steel themselves to tell Daichi that he finally has to let him go.
Series: Android Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1587229
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	such a heavenly way to die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyWisteria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyWisteria/gifts).



> HEY TOA HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND HAPPY NEW YEAR YOU HAVE NO ONE BUT YOURSELF TO BLAME OKAY  
> Seriously this is all on her okay I never planned this
> 
> It'll make a lot more sense if you read Sixty Four first!

Issei looks up from his desk as Tetsurou walks in. “Hey.”

Tetsurou’s mouth is pinched unhappily. His fingers are tapping restless rhythms on one hip. “He’s here?”

“Yeah. He’s in the waiting room.”

“Fuck.” Tetsurou runs a savage hand through his hair. “ _Fuck_.”

“It had to happen,” Issei tells him, as gently as he can manage.

“You _know_ what this -”

“I know.”

“How he -”

“I know.”

“And I’m the one who has to tell him. God -”

“I - can come in with you. If you want.”

“What? Issei, you don’t want to be there for this.”

Issei rubs his neck slowly, wincing at the ache in his spine. “No, I don’t. But you don’t want to do this alone, either. It’s fine.”

Tetsurou looks like he might argue for a moment, but he only sighs shortly before giving him a nod. “Thanks.”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go, then, let’s get it over with.”

Issei stands without a word, and follows Tetsurou to the waiting room. It’s well lit, all soothing colours and round edged furniture - they’re a robot business, after all, and humans still tend to be just a little apprehensive about the thought of sentient machines, even after all these years, so the waiting rooms, the entire facility, has been designed to be as calming as possible.

Daichi is the only one there, this early in the day. Half the roboticists themselves haven’t come in to work yet, and he’s sitting here, hands folded placidly on top of his cane and his white head bowed a little, as though daydreaming, or in absent prayer. But he looks up when they enter, and his eyes are just as piercing as they’ve ever been. 

Piercing - and apprehensive.

“Tetsu,” he nods. “Issei.”

“Hey, Daichi.”

“Morning, Daichi,” Issei says, glancing at Tetsurou as they both take a seat. His face has smoothed out into a smile, his eyes kind.

He won’t let anything show in front of Daichi, Issei knows.

“Morning,” Daichi says. “Coming in early nowadays? Or were you already here? I’m hoping you two don’t still pull the kind of all nighters you used to when you were in your thirties.”

Tetsurou snorts. “Like hell we would. I _wish_ we could.”

“Weren’t you supposed to retire two years ago?”

Issei huffs a laugh, Tetsurou rolls his eyes. “He was. We both were. But once the empathy program took off -”

Daichi chuckles. Issei notices a thumb absently smoothing over the gold band on his left ring finger. “Made you even more famous. Too busy accepting awards and designing safeguards to leave it to the kids.”

“Hey, there were a hell of a lot of safeguards to design.”

“It’s a very easy program to misuse, you know that.”

“Mhmm, yeah. You guys do good work.”

“Don’t we know it,” Issei chuckles.

The answering smile fades a bit too fast for his liking. “So,” Daichi says, looking between them.

“So.” Tetsurou’s sorrowful smile is back. “Daichi, to put it bluntly . . .”

“There’s nothing you can do?”

“There . . . really isn’t. Koushi’s an old model, he was one of the very first, and things have advanced considerably since then. Hell, you remember the massive hassle you had getting his charging port changed when energy systems were switched over in ‘53? This would be ten times worse than that. We’d have to source the blueprints for the model, we’d have to make the parts custom, and we’d have to figure out how to switch out a very significant part of his machinery without doing unintentional damage. It’d cost you half your remaining pension. And even assuming we could get past all that, the fact remains that what makes Koushi Koushi is his brain. And his brain is . . . it was one of the very earliest iterations of the positronic brain. It was never meant for such long term use. It’s only because you kept him in such good shape and brought him in so regularly that he’s lasted so long. If it suddenly had to learn to cope with directing a practically new body . . .”

“We can’t predict the effects with much certainty,” Issei says, quietly. “But we’re reasonably sure they wouldn’t be good.”

Daichi’s gaze is on his clasped hands. “Would it hurt him?”

There’s a pause as Issei exchanges a glance with Tetsurou.

“It would,” Tetsuoru says. “Insofar as it possibly can, for him.”

Daichi lets out a long, long breath, and transfers his gaze to the ceiling. “So that’s it, then. So much for androids being everlasting, indestructible . . .”

“You took very good care of him,” Tetsurou says, gently, so gently. “He would have broken down two decades earlier if he’d been anyone but yours.”

“It’ll be peaceful,” Issei offers. “It’ll be just like powering down, to him.”

“No,” Daichi says. He’s still looking at the ceiling, but his voice is firm. “I’ll tell him the truth, and nothing else. He deserves that much. He -” His voice breaks, then, just a little. “He already knows, I think.”

Neither of them know what to say to that. They wait, faces politely averted, while Daichi blinks his tears away.

“Tetsurou.”

“Yes, Daichi?”

“Will you take me to him?”

“Of course.”

They go to the workspace assigned to Koushi, a small lab off of Tetsurou’s main one. He’s lying on a slab at a 45 degree angle from the floor, his burnished metal worn and scuffed and scratched. He’s hooked up to a couple of monitors, and he blinks slowly, at regular intervals, focused on nothing. But when Daichi walks in his eyes light up bright, and he makes a garbled sound in his throat, raising a shaking hand.

Tetsurou makes haste to go and unhook him from the monitors while Daichi holds his hand, pressing it warmly.

“Hi, Koushi,” he murmurs, so soft and intimate and full of warmth that Issei turns away, unwilling to intrude on the moment, “You doing okay?”

Another garbled noise, almost musical.

“Yeah, I know, home isn't home without you. But these guys take good care of you, yeah?”

A little whistle, rising and falling, the auditory equivalent to an eyeroll. Daichi laughs.

“Come on, they’re not that bad. Can you stand?”

Issei looks around at that, mouth opening to warn against it, but Tetsurou beats him to it.

“Not a great idea, Daichi, his legs aren’t in great shape -”

“Just a couple of steps,” Daichi says like he hasn’t heard, eyes still fixed on Koushi. “Just till the wall. I want to sit next to you for a bit.”

Koushi complies without hesitation, wobbling his way to the wall with Daichi’s hand firm around his arm, and slides to the ground with the creaking of several joints.

“There we go,” Daichi says, seating himself on the ground next to him with some difficulty. “Okay?”

Koushi nods, glowing brown-gold eyes fixed on Daichi’s face with something that could almost be called adoration. Daichi looks away from him to them, some steel creeping into his gaze.

“I’ll do it myself,” he says, and both of them know better than to argue. There’s a hand on Issei’s back, and Tetsurou is pushing him out of the lab in front of him. There’s no door between it and the main lab, so they stand a respectful distance away, and wait. Still, Issei can catch a murmur here and there from the echoes.

“ . . . to tell you. They don’t think there’s anything they can do . . . I know. I know. But they know what they’re talking about . . . I could never replace you, Koushi, you don’t . . . Me? I’ll be okay. Yes, sweetheart, even without you. The garden? Don’t worry about that, I’ll make Tetsu come in and do it for me . . . “

Next to Issei, Tetsurou closes his eyes tight and leans his head back against the wall. 

“ . . . yes, I have the chart the doctor gave me, I’ll be sure to . . . No. No, of course not . . . Him? You were never meant to be him, Koushi, even if your names are the same. You’re you, not him, and I love you for you just like I loved him for him . . . I know. I know. Of course I’ll miss you. Every day . . . I owe you so much, thank you for everything, everything you’ve . . . not scared? Good. That’s my boy . . . I promise, yes. I’ll be fine . . . sure, what is it?”

There’s silence for a moment or two, and then Issei hears the faint sound of humming, a vague melody.

“Fuck,” Tetsurou sighs. “Fuck, Daichi . . .”

“Is it -”

“Suga’s song.”

Issei swallows as something hard seems to lodge in his throat. It doesn’t help.

They wait. Minutes pass. Issei thinks he hears the click of a switch at one point, but the humming continues, so he figures he imagined it. They wait, and wait, and finally the sound dies down. 

They wait a minute or so more, out of respect, but Issei can see that Tetsurou wants to comfort Daichi just as badly as he does, so he doesn’t feel guilty about starting to go back first. 

He rounds the corner to the smaller lab, and stops in his tracks.

Daichi and Koushi are sitting on the floor, Daichi’s head on Koushi’s shoulder, one of Koushi’s copper hands clasped in Daichi’s and held in his lap. Both their eyes are closed. Both of them have small, peaceful smiles on their faces. The dark spots on Daichi’s shirt from his tears are still damp.

“Would you look at that,” Tetsurou says softly next to Issei. “The son of a bitch wouldn’t let Suga get away from him a second time.”

“Fuck,” Issei says, unsteadily. “Tetsu, we don’t know if -”

“Kenma,” Tetsurou says, and the fluorescent strips overheard light up.

“Yes, Kuro?”

“Please scan Sawamura Daichi for vital signs.”

There’s a soft whirring, and the lights go from blue to pale purple. 

“Scan complete. All vital signs extinct. Body temperature dropping rapidly. Estimated time of clinical death for Sawamura Daichi is three minutes ago, 7:53 A.M.”

“Cause of death?”

“Circumstances indicate sudden cardiac arrest, but the cause cannot be determined without further investigation.”

“And Koushi?”

“Android K3S8-A, also known as Koushi, displays no sign of activity. His main power switch has been set to ‘off’ and has been irreversibly disabled. He cannot be revived.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Would you like me to inform emergency services with regard to Sawamura Daichi?”

“Yes, please.”

“Would there be anything further?”

“No, thank you.”

The lights dim as Kenma retreats back to his main servers. Issei and Tetsurou stand there, looking at Daichi’s body in silence.

“We probably shouldn’t touch him,” Issei says eventually, his voice rougher than he had expected it to be. “A death on company premises, the police will want to -”

“Yeah. Shouldn’t be a problem, though, they can access Kenma’s video if they need to.”

“Yeah.”

“You lucky, lucky bastard, Suga,” Tetsurou murmurs, his mouth quirking up like there’s a laugh caught in his throat. “If only you knew what he did for you, huh?”

“He had a good life,” Issei says, reaching out to grasp Tetsurou’s shoulder. “He lived well. And it - it was the way he would have wanted to go, I think.”

“Oh, for sure. Peaceful, quiet, no fuss. He probably made a will a decade ago. If only he hadn’t had to watch Suga - _a_ Suga - die again.” Tetsurou shrugs, and Issei sees his fingers curl in on themselves. “He did so much good, carrying so much pain, you know?”

“I know, Tetsu.”

“Issei?”

“Yeah.”

“Daichi’s d -” Tetsurou breaks off, clears his throat, tries again. “Daichi - he’s -”

“Daichi’s dead,” Issei says, through gritted teeth, and squeezes Tetsurou’s shoulder, hard. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” Tetsurou gasps as he turns to bury his face in Issei’s shoulder. They sink to the floor together, Issei holding him tight as he sobs, and sobs, and sobs, back heaving and shoulders shaking. Issei cries, too. 

How can he not?

They cry for long enough that Kenma’s lights come back on, anxious now. Neither of them can spare the breath to answer his queries. He’s the one who guides the police in, who tells them what they need to know, while Issei and Tetsurou sit against the wall, exhausted and empty and crying. 

Still crying, because dammit, the whole world should cry at the loss of such a good man. The world should mourn for having lost a man who loved so deeply, so kindly, so selflessly. 

But it will not, it cannot, and so they will honour him and remember him for as long as they are able, as he had honoured and remembered the man he had loved.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](https://yaelathewordsmith.tumblr.com/)^.^  
> [title from this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siO6dkqidc4/)


End file.
